Almost as Good as the Real Thing
by northern.poet
Summary: When Ephraim dies after the events at Renvall, Eirika is left with the shattered remnants of a country barely held together by faith in its prince. In desperation to save her people, she poses as her brother and leads an assault on Grado to reclaim her kingdom.
1. Chapter 1

When they were younger, the twins used to make a game of it. Ephraim would slip into the kitchen to grab at a loaf of warm bread or soft, doughy pastries, stuffing them into the front of his shirt until someone noticed him. He would take off sprinting, the shouts of whatever unfortunate soul happened to catch him this time echoing down the corridor. The key to the trick, however, came when he rounded the corner, a half-panicked grin plastered on his face, and crouched into the corner as Eirika took off running. He would sink down into the shadows as his pursuer rounded the corner a few seconds later, though sometimes he would give in to temptation and stick out his leg to send them toppling over.

After the two of them were a ways away, Ephraim would usually take a moment to help himself to one of the treats he had stolen, paying little mind to the fact that half of them were crushed, smeared across his shirt. Eirika was faster than he was, especially when they were young, and usually managed to completely avoid whomever was chasing her. But even on the occasions when they did catch up to her, she would just flash a smile and shrug at them. After all, she hadn't even been in the kitchen that day, how could she have stolen anything?

It wasn't fair of them, of course, and even if puberty hadn't made that particular trick much harder to pull off, Eirika probably would have put a stop to it. After all, she knew, a princess wasn't supposed to play tricks on her subjects. She needed to command their respect. To gain their trust. Princesses didn't lie.

* * *

When Kyle and Forde find her, she's pulling her blade out of Tirado's stomach. Maybe that's why they tell her the truth immediately. She may have been in a clean white dress the last time they saw her, perched on the edge of the stairs to see them and Ephraim off, but they know the look of someone who doesn't have time for soft words. Her face is flint, sparking off the edge of her still bloody sword, as if their faces have already given voice to the truth that their words trip over in pursuit of.

Ephraim is dead.

The first thing she thinks, as she wipes the blade against the corner of her skirt, is that she will have to be careful around the cooks, because they know the trick by now.

And then she has to backtrack, to try and makes sense of that thought, because part of her is still trying to put together the pieces. It is the part that remembers the look on King Hayden's face when he told her that her father was dead. The part that remembers Seth's hand on her shoulder, and those whispered condolences from everyone in the room, assuring her that they would understand and support her should she chose to end her journey there, to fall to the grief they were sure was snapping at her heels.

That part of her brain reminds her that she has lost a father and a brother in a span of less than a month.

The other part of her brain tells her that Renais has lost its king and its prince, and that is the part that straightens her back.

"Take me to him."

* * *

He had passed away only a day earlier from an infected wound he had received while trying to escape. The knights, Forde explains to Eirika, were used to having heal staves or vulneraries readily around, and hadn't know what to do for him in the middle of a forest, unable to go find help for fear of discovery. He tries to make it not sound like an excuse.

Eirika kneels next to him. Kneels next to his corpse. It's not bloody, and that's what's strangest. The gash on his side is well bandaged, his clothes washed. Even the hole in his tunic is patched, if roughly. But he is still pale and cold and his face is empty. After battlefields, the quietness of it hits harder than any final gurgled scream. Cold sweat still clings to his face and hair, and Eirika brushes his bangs out his eyes as gently as possibly. Her brain is still working, still trying to catch up with itself.

She straightens without turning to face Kyle and Forde. "I need some privacy."

Eirika listens to the rustle of trees as they leave, standing quietly until they are an appropriate distance away. When she does finally move, she does so with an efficiency that surprises even herself.

Ephraim's armor, what he's still wearing that is, comes off easily enough. The bulk of it, including the breastplate and pauldrons, is piled on the ground next to him. She removes his greaves first, laying them softly on the ground with the rest of the armor. The bright red of her boots would be a dead giveaway, she decides, and slips his black ones off as well. The tasset she unclips fairly easily, sliding her hand under the small of his back to lift up his hips, so she can slide it out from under him. His cape is tangled around him, having been used as a makeshift blanket, and it takes a bit of work to sort out. His gloves also give her trouble in getting off, since his hands had already started to stiffen. She spends several minutes slowly working each finger out of the glove.

That's when the first wave of nasuea hits, and she falls backward from where she had been crouched over him, hands grabbing at fistfuls of dead, half rotten leaves in an attempt to find something solid to brace herself against. She backs into a nearby tree and digs her fingers into the bark, feelings it scrape unforgivingly at her knuckles as she peels away huge sections of it and throws it to the ground, her eyes never leaving her brother's body. His right glove hangs limply, half off arm, and she can still see the outline of his curled fingers in the shape of it. For a moment she feels as if he is reaching for her, and her heart flips in fear and relief, a joy at the fleeting thought that he might be alive after all, and a terror that he carries the same fake life as the strange creatures that have been haunting her journey for weeks now.

And then it's gone again, and he is just a dead body again, pale and lonely and half-undressed. Eirika takes deep breaths to steady herself, sinking back against her mutilated tree, running her fingers gently along the soft sticky underside that her frantic scramble at its has revealed. She focuses her thoughts to one sharp point, that one point that had been stuck inside of her chest since the moment she heard that Ephraim was dead. Renais needs him. Renais needs him more than it needs me.

Renais had always needed him more, wanted him more. Where she struggled every day to carry herself with the proper bearing, to hold her head high and keep her arms close to her body, to walk at the right pace and with the right steps, he charged ahead with full faith that there would be an army at his back. That respect that had taken her years to cultivate, he had commanded almost without thinking. The kingdom had already fallen to chaos with her father's death. The thing that had held every together before was her insistence that Ephraim was still alive. It was what had allowed her to lead them to pierce Grado's occupation of Renvall. But now? What hope is their of piecing her kingdom back together when she barely feels capable of holding the respect of a small retinue of knights? No, there is no question in her mind of what she needs to do.

She finishes her task quickly, removing his tunic and other glove. She fishes through his bags to find a spare undershirt and pair of pants, not wanting to leave him completely naked. The bracelet gives her pause. She knows that she needs to keep his safe, but she can't think of a good place to hide her own. It takes her a moment to realize that she doesn't have to. If she had died, she was sure Ephraim would have taken her bracelet for safekeeping. So she simply puts hers back on after she pulls on his gloves, slipping his own on over her newly gloved left arm.

The rest of the armor goes on easily, though she has to pull the breast plate uncomfortably tight against her chest. At some point, she knows, she will have to find a way to bind her breasts, but she's not quite sure how to attempt that for now, and she's fairly sure that the armor will flatten her out well enough for the time being.

Her hair is the last hang up. She knows that there is no way that she can easily match Ephraim's cut, having neither the means to cut it cleanly nor the time to spend on it. Her only hope is that, since most of the troops haven't seen Ephraim for the better part of several months, they won't notice the difference as peculiar.

She lops it off in a few quick strokes of her sword, scattering it beneath the trees and kicking up dirt and leaves until there is no trace of the turquoise strands anywhere in the camp. Her neck feels strangely cold without it's comforting weight. Finally satisfied, Eirika leans down to pick up the last piece of her costume. Standing, she hefts up Ephraim's lance, noting with dismay how much heavier it is than the lithe rapier she is used to wielding. That will certainly take some getting used to.

And that's it. She swallows back whatever tears still cling to the edges of her vision, taking deep breaths to steady herself.

Eirika of Renais is dead. Long live the prince.


	2. Chapter 2

It's a strange thing for Eirika, trying to figure out how Ephraim would mourn her death. Mostly she just tries to keep to herself as much as possible, staying in her tent few the quiet hours between long days spent traveling back to Frelia. Kyle and Forde are the only members of her oddly cobbled together group whom she has regular contact with. It's a decision she makes based both in convenience and in believability. Other than Seth, Ephraim wouldn't have had any knowledge of her traveling companions. Not only is there the risk, while talking to them, of someone being astute enough to see through her lies, but she also worries that she might slip up, might say something that Ephraim would have no way to know.

Seth, for his part, keeps mostly to himself as well. He seems to take the supposed loss of Eirika hard, visting only to give cursory reports as to the state of the supplies and well being of the troops. Eirika does not push the subject. Seth's aggressive loyalty makes him one of the people she is most worried about. And though she has considered letting both him and Franz in on her charade, due to their position as knights of Renais, in the end it seems safer to have as few people in on the lie as possible. Whatever else she might be feeling, Eirika knows that trusting others right now, however much of her burden it might ease, is something she can do only with the highest prejudice. Kyle and Forde were necessary inclusions, otherwise she would most likely have tried to go things alone until she could get more of a political foothold.

Even so, she had been happy for there help, when she had first emerged from the woods where her brother's corpse lay, undressed and unburied. The brief look of bewilderment and surprise alone had been a point of unintentional reassurance from the two knights. If the people who had seen the Prince die could believe, however briefly, that he had walked out of those woods, then perhaps she had a better chance of fooling the rest of the world than the meager and desperate portion that she had allotted herself.

It didn't take them long to cotton on to the trick, however. Kyle was the first to speak.

"May I ask the meaning of this?"

Eirika had leveled her gaze at him, steady and unwavering. Whatever else, she could not hesitate here. Loyal as Kyle and Forde might be, she held together her deception by her own strength, and to pull in their true support, and not simply half-hearted feints at it, she could not afford to hesitate with them.

"No. You may not. You may go bury my brother's body and pack up the supplies you need from your camp. When you return I will tell you whatever I believe you need to know on how to proceed from here on out." She had paused briefly, and then, remembering that respect must work both ways, had added, "I would appreciate your discretion and obedience in this matter. Though I understand that you have been through a great deal in these past few weeks, and my actions can not making coping with the," She paused again, gathering breath, "with the loss of Ephraim any easier, you must understand that I act only for the good of my people. And I expect you to follow suit."

She had been surprised that it was Forde who had nodded his head to her, Forde who had grabbed Kyle's elbow and steered him back into the wood. Eirika was on a friendly basis with most of the nights, though she had never known them as her brother had, and had been around Forde and Kyle enough to know that Kyle was usually the one to force the issue of responsibility. Not that Forde wasn't a good knight, he simply didn't have the sober dedication that Kyle seemed to carry heavily on his back.

Perhaps it was Forde's almost juvenile flexibility that allowed him to so quickly acquiesce to Eirika's plan. She had turned the question over in her head while she waited for them to come back out of the woods. Her heart had still been racing from the brief conversation, her senses stretched taut across every word, every reaction. Their actions could unhinge everything. And it was for this reason that she had let herself believe, letting out a small sigh and rolling her shoulder to shake some of the tension from them, that Forde had seen in her face what he followed so readily in Kyle's. What he followed in her brother's.

She knows she can only afford herself as much relief as will increase her chances of success, however. Trusting in her own abilities, or the loyalty of others, in a dangerous balancing act. Eirika plots out entire conversations in her head in the middle of the night, waking before dawn to walk half a mile away and practice her lance work. She goes over plans and backup plans in her head as she works, lunging and thrusting while she tries to remember whether or not her brother was on a first name basis with the knights of Frelia, or if he had done well in arithmetic.

It is a blessing that they were so close, and shared so much with each other, she knows, but that is also what makes things difficult. She has snuck back into her tent on more than one occasion with red eyes and a soreness that has nothing to do with the unfamiliar movements of her lance. No one in the camp comments on how bedraggled she looks in the mornings. For now, at least, she is safe under the cover of morning. How long that will last she doesn't know. The scars of loss and death are meant to heal with time, but keeping up the lie was like cutting them anew every time she heard someone call her by Ephraim's name.

* * *

Eirika calls Kyle and Forde into her tent the night before they cross into Frelia. She has already sent Vanessa ahead to announce their presence and request a meeting with the King, and if all goes well then she expects to be making her case to Hayden within the day. It's going to be a delicate conversation. First and foremost she has to relay the news of her supposed death believably, and cement her role as Ephraim. But beyond that, she has to build up moment for the next stage of her plan. The key of her deception and also the bulk of the reasons for it lay behind the walls of castle Frelia.

Kyle arrives first, unsurprisingly, entering the tent and standing to the side, waiting for further instructions. He looks tired as well. Everyone does. Journeying back from Renvall has taking more out of them than traveling to it had, despite the fact that their trek back has been fairly uneventful. Battle wounds can be healed easily enough, when you have reason to push on. Emotional exhaustion is less easily dealt with. Natasha and Moulder had been kept busier than any of the fighters, doing their best to maintain the spirits of the group. They were dragging themselves back to lick their wounds and wait, and that was the danger of finally arriving in a place where they could rest. If they laid down there, they would never get up again. If they closed their eyes they would never open them until Grado had burned the continent to the ground and came frothing to the doorstep.

Eirika had waited for war to come to her once before, and now her brother and father were dead, her kingdom was taken, and her people were suffering. She couldn't rely on the competence of kings and princes this time. Hayden would have been happy to keep her from going after Ephraim the first time, and there was no chance of him supporting her plans if she couldn't convince him of her strength. No. Of Ephraim's strength, that she had taken onto herself, had hefted like a shield in front of her. It is unwieldy and set her off-balance, but is was the only way to face the onslaught that faced her.

Sighing, Eirika runs over her plan one last time in her head, confirming for the hundredth time that both her reasoning and tactics were sound. Much like they had been when she had first disguised herself as Ephraim, Kyle and Forde are to serve as her test run. Convincing them of her strategy is not only vital to its success, but also serves as an opportunity to practice her presentation of it. Kyle and Forde are bound to follow her as knights of Renais. Hayden, though Renais and Frelia do have a strong history of allegiance, owes her no such loyalty, particularly when her kingdom is now serving as Grado's foothold to begin an attack on his.

Eirika doesn't begin talking until Forde arrives, grinning meekly at her. He seems about to launch into an overly complicated and at least partially fabricated explanation until he sees her face, at which point he simply nods once at her and apologizes. She nods back, then gestures that the two knights come over to where she has laid a map of Magvel out on the table.

"I know that up to this point I have been rather opaque about my plans, and I apologize for that. I have asked a great deal from the two of you, and offered little in the way of explanation, other than my word that I do so for the good of Renais."

Kyle clears his throat, and Eirika pauses to let him speak. "For what it's worth, sir, I don't believe that either Forde or I have questioned your actions. While it's true that Ephraim was generally more forward about his plans, we realize that these are unusual circumstances."

"Your patience with and understanding of this fact is appreciated, and perhaps I can help with at least one facet of it now. When we arrive in Frelia tomorrow, I plan to formally request the aid of King Hayden in reclaiming Renais and, from there, moving in to dethrone Vigarde.

Forde whistles. "That's no small task."

"Nor was taking Renvall. The children of Fado don't do things by halves. Perhaps it would be easy to believe that a princess would be more content riding out the storm, but I trust it would not seem out of character for Ephraim to pursue such a course of action?"

"I believe he probably would have fought his way to the heart of Grado by himself if he had been given the chance."

"Then consider my determination that of my brother's."

"Or perhaps more than that, sir," Kyle cut in. "You'll need it if you plan to convince Hayden to support you. We may have succeeded in taking Renvall, but we did lose one of the royal twins, which is a harsh loss to return from. He is already stretched thin as it is anyway, and even under the best of circumstances probably doesn't have many troops to spare."

"Fortunately, I don't need his troops. I need his political support. As it is now, the only power I hold is that of a name that has been taken from me and an identity that's not my own. The momentum I need to gather is double-faceted: I need success in battle, but more importantly, I need political support. We will provide the first. Hayden will provide the second."

"So you hope to have Hayden official endorse your claim on Renais and plans to retake it. But what about the victories? We may have made some inroads into Grado's power but they still have us far overpowered."

"This is where the politics of the matter come into play. Frelia has her back against the wall. Renais has already fallen. Which leaves Carcino, Rausten, and Jehanna. Carcino is small but it is the closest. However, it is also new, and we have no way to know how they will react as the war continues. As the youngest nation it seems the most likely to focus on protecting itself.

"Jehanna is a possible ally, but it is also the farthest away. In addition, it is under attack from Grado. This means two things: first, though we have a common enemy, they will also most likely be focused on protecting themselves much as Frelia is. Secondly, we do not know what state they will be in by the time we would be able to reach them. For all we know, Grado may have enough force to take the kingdom before we even have the chance to ask for their support, or offer ours in return.

"Which leaves Rausten. Rausten is insulated from Grado, which means they have the resources to support us."

"That is all well and good," Kyle interrupts, "but convincing Rausten to help us will be no easy task. They are slow to move in matters of diplomacy, let alone war."

"Which is where the politics of the matter come in. You remember that girl you told me Ephraim had befriended? Myrrh was her name, I believe?"

"Yes. She was a manakete, who claimed to sense darkness from Grado."

"But she disappeared when he died."

"And we are going to find her again. Rausten may not be quick to motivate for a war of politics, but I believe it will do for a war against demons. We need to reframe the conflict. Which is why we need Hayden's endorsement as well. If the acknowledged heir of Renais is making a claim for the throne in order to retrieve the sacred stone, a manakete by his side, and calls for the aid of Rausten to conquer the forces of darkness that have seized hold of Grado, I doubt that Mansel will deny it."

"It's a risky plan. It depends on a lot of things going our way."

"I know. Perhaps its more than we will be able to pull off. But doubt is death. And if I can't get your support on this matter, then surely none of the other pieces will ever fall into place."

Silence draped itself over the tent poles and hung down with the canvas roof. Eirika didn't push the matter. Where a firm hand had helped her secure the respect of Kyle and Forde, she knew that this was a matter that could not be pushed. Her impatience would only turn into their festering unease. If they were to support her, they had to come to that conclusion of their own volition.

Kyle breaks the silence. "It's a precarious thing, but I agree with you that sitting in the false safety of Frelia won't help. Ephraim wouldn't have wanted us to give up on Renais so easily. I believe he would have trusted you in this matter." He pauses. "No. I trust you on this matter, as my princess and as my general. The will of the dead have no place in this decision. Eirika, this victory will be yours and yours alone, and I hope to help you to achieve it."

"And I as well, though I doubt I can say that quite as eloquently as Kyle. But you have my support as well."

Eirika lets out the breath she had been holding as quietly as possible, doing her best to disguise how tense she had been. "Very well then. Get some sleep."

She holds each of their gazes for a moment, confirming with her own eyes what she had heard in their words. "Tomorrow we bring the war to Grado."


End file.
